Verta Taylor is Professor of Sociology and Affiliated Professor of Feminist Studies.  Her research focuses on social movements, gender, and sexuality.  Her books include Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret (with Leila J. Rupp), winner of the 2005 Outstanding book award from the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) Sex and Gender section; Survival in the Doldrums : The American Women's Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s (with Leila J. Rupp) that received an outstanding book award from Collective Behavior and Social Movements section of the American Sociological Association; Rock-a-by Baby: Feminism, Self-Help and Postpartum Depression; The Marrying Kind:  Debating Same-Sex Marriage within the Lesbian and Gay Movement (with Mary Bernstein), the Oxford Handbook of U. S. Women’s Social Movement Activism (with Holly McCammon, Jo Reger, and Rachel Einwohner), and nine editions of the gender/women’s studies text Feminist Frontiers (McGraw-Hill). She has published over 100 articles and chapters on women’s movements, the gay and lesbian movement, social movement theory, feminist methods, drag queens, same sex marriage, and sexual fluidity, which have appeared in American Sociological Review (ASR), Annual Review of Sociology, Signs, Social Problems, Mobilization, Gender & Society, Sexualities, Qualitative Sociology, Journal of Women’s History, and Journal of Homosexuality. She received the Social Movements and Collective Behavior Sections 2010 outstanding article award for a 2009 coauthored article in ASR on the San Francisco same-sex marriage protest. Taylor’s current research focuses on sexual fluidity and queer identity among college age women and the gay and lesbian movement.

Taylor has been the recipient of numerous teaching and mentoring awards, including Ohio State University’s Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award and Sociologist for Women in Society’s Feminist Mentoring Award. And her research been recognized by several national lifetime achievement awards, including the American Sociological Association’s Jessie Bernard Award for the study of sex and gender, the John D. McCarthy Lifetime Achievement Award for her scholarship on social movements, the Simon and Gagnon Award for her scholarship on sexuality, and Sociologists for Women and Society’s Feminist Lectureship. Taylor has served on nearly two dozen editorial boards, including as Deputy Editor of the American Sociological Review, and she has chaired three sections of the American Sociological Association: Sex and Gender, Collective Behavior and Social Movements, and Sexualities.